Los Angeles delegates from the Gaza Freedom March 2009, Dara Wells-Hajjarand Shae Popovich will relay experiences of their recent trip to Gaza andCairo. They will share stories, photos and art from this extremely dangerousbut powerful trip. They will also discuss how we can continue the work tochange global public opinion around Gaza and the occupied territories.

The afternoon will also include a screening of Arlington West and apresentation by the film makers, Sally Marr and Peter Dudar.

I hope, for the sake of peace, that young people all over the country willsee ARLINGTON WEST and come face to face with the consequences of war.--Howard Zinn

Art Against Empire uses the power of posters to document 60 years ofopposition to U.S. interventions into the domestic affairs of sovereignnations. Political, economic and military interventions, many of themcovert, have repeatedly resulted in unacceptable deaths and misery formillions. These posters show hopes and dreams, and the pain of dreamsdestroyed.

Art Against Empire will showcase over 100 political posters in the LACEgalleries, spanning two dozen sovereign nations including Korea, Vietnam,the Philippines, Guatemala, Haiti, Cuba, Iran, and South Africa. It attemptsto inform, challenge and inspire by confronting the viewer with images ofpast struggles that remain powerfully relevant today. It both raisesquestions about past interventions and fosters debate about present ones.The exhibition will also provide insight into why the amount of devastationcaused by the recent earthquake in Haiti can be linked to its long historyof French colonialism and U.S. imperialism.

The United States is the focus of this exhibition. As citizens, we areultimately responsible for the actions that are taken by our government inour name. Censorship and repression, so prevalent in wartime, invariablyattempt to eliminate dissent, thereby violating the principles on which thisdemocracy was founded. These posters document the efforts of people whorefuse to remain silent and who use the power of art to inspire action.

Israel Is an Apartheid State and That is Why They Are Losing Legitimacy

By Judy RebickRebick's ZSpace Page: March 4, 2010

Before Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) even began members of the OntarioLegislature and the Canadian Parliament are falling all over each other todenounce it. I can't remember another time when elected legislators formallydenounced a student activity like this. Perhaps during the 1950s whenMcCarthyism was rampant but that was before my time.

Last week the Ontario Legislature unanimously passed a resolution denouncingIsrael Apartheid Week submitted by PC Peter Shure who said calling Israel anapartheid state was "close to hate speech." While there were only 30 MPPs inthe Legislature at the time, NDP MPP Cheri di Novo was one of them and spokein favour of the resolution. This week a Conservative MP is introducing aresolution calling IAW anti-Semitic.

Before I deal with why these unprecedented attacks are taking place, I'dlike to share with you a great talk I heard last night at Ryerson fromNa'eem Jeena activist and academic from South Africa who works forPalestinian solidarity. He told us that South African apartheid had threepillars of apartheid and Israel shares all three.

1. Different rights for different races. In the case of Israel, it isdifferent rights for Jews and for non-Jews. For example the law of return of1950 says Jews can return to Israel and be given citizenship even if theyhave no links to the country other than mythical biblical ones; whereasPalestinians cannot return even if their parents or grandparents livedthere.

2. Separation of so-called racial groups into different geographical areas.Even within the borders of Israel, 93 percent of land is reserved as anational land trust or Jewish National Fund land is for the exclusive use ofJews. The 20 percent of the population that is Palestinians living in Israelhave to share access to the 7 percent of private land that is left. TheIsraeli Supreme Court has made a number of decisions that Palestinianscannot live on Jewish lands. There are not only residential areas that arebanned to Palestinians but there are separate roads for Jews andPalestinians. That was never true in South Africa even in times of crisis.Moreover Palestinians have less access to water than Jews living nearby.

Finally the movement of Palestinians is severely restricted much more sothan were blacks in South Africa. The famous pass laws in South Africa meantthat blacks had to show government issued passes to move around butPalestinians are even more restricted by walls and checkpoints and if theylive in the Gaza Strip can't leave at all.

3. Security and Repression Matrix of Laws and Security. There was seriousrepression in the black townships but there were never tanks or planesbuzzing overhead like there is in West Bank. Israeli military violenceagainst Palestinian communities, says Jeena, is far worse than anythingsuffered by blacks in South Africa during apartheid.

If Israel is becoming a pariah in the world it is not because ofanti-Semitism, it is because they are practicing a form of apartheid evenmore egregious than that practiced in South Africa. Others have compiledcomments from some of the most respected leaders of the anti-apartheidmovement in South Africa who see what Israel is doing as apartheid. There isa reason why the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign isstrongest in South Africa. People there recognize apartheid when they seeit.

Finally the UN Convention on Apartheid condemns the crime of apartheid thatrefers to a series of inhuman acts - including murder, torture, arbitraryarrest, illegal imprisonment, exploitation, marginalization, andpersecution - committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining thedomination of one racial group by another. If the shoe fits.

So why are politicians including some from the NDP setting a studentactivity like IAW in their sites? An all party coalition of parliamentarianshas been holding hearings on what they call the "new anti-Semitism," bywhich they mean criticism of Israel. They heard from every UniversityPresident who appeared before them that there is no rise of anti-Semitism ontheir campuses and yet the false rumours of such a rise persist because ofthe equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Israel is beginningto see that the non-violent anti-apartheid and BDS (Boycott, Divestment andSanctions) movement is a greater threat to their power than the any militarythreat. In Israel and Palestine, they are moving to arrest non-violentactivists who are leading the movement there. And they are using all theireconomic and political power to push friendly governments to move againstthese protests. But there is a problem. It's called democracy and freedom ofspeech. However much you might disagree that Israel practices apartheid, youcannot shut down a discussion of the issue or a demonstration ordisinvestment campaign against Israel because freedom of speech is afundamental democratic right in most Western countries. In Canada, the onlyway to shut down the movement is to vilify it as hateful or anti-Semitic.

That is what our parliamentarians are now trying to do.

I am Jewish and have been working on and off for Palestinian rights for manyyears, as have many other Jews who feel a special responsibility to speakout against injustices committed by Israel. During that time, I have rarelyexperienced any anti-Semitism. In the IAW organizing, I have experiencednone. If Israel is losing legitimacy in the world, it is because of whattheir government is doing to the Palestinians, not because of anti-Semitism.This attempt to shut down criticism of Israel is the most frighteningassault on freedom of speech I have ever seen in this country. Whether ornot you think Israeli Apartheid Week is the best name for this week ofdiscussion supporting Palestinian rights, please write your MP and your MPPand tell them you think it is wrong for Parliamentarians to denounce thiskind of educational activity. o

Judy Rebick is the CAW-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy andmaintains a blog at www.transformingpower.ca where this article firstappeared.

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Swing Riots Concert July 17th

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles, 1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

SwingRiots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present SwingRiots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime SwingRiots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it! --Ross Altman